Anne's House of Dreams, Lucy Maud Montgomery [ebook reader for surface pro .TXT] 📗
- Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery
- Performer: 0553213180
Book online «Anne's House of Dreams, Lucy Maud Montgomery [ebook reader for surface pro .TXT] 📗». Author Lucy Maud Montgomery
“These roses are very late—they bloom after all the others have gone—and they hold all the warmth and soul of the summer come to fruition,” said Owen, plucking some of the glowing, half-opened buds.
“The rose is the flower of love—the world has acclaimed it so for centuries. The pink roses are love hopeful and expectant—the white roses are love dead or forsaken—but the red roses—ah, Leslie, what are the red roses?”
“Love triumphant,” said Leslie in a low voice.
“Yes—love triumphant and perfect. Leslie, you know—you understand. I have loved you from the first. And I KNOW you love me—I don’t need to ask you. But I want to hear you say it—my darling— my darling!”
Leslie said something in a very low and tremulous voice. Their hands and lips met; it was life’s supreme moment for them and as they stood there in the old garden, with its many years of love and delight and sorrow and glory, he crowned her shining hair with the red, red rose of a love triumphant.
Anne and Gilbert returned presently, accompanied by Captain Jim. Anne lighted a few sticks of driftwood in the fireplace, for love of the pixy flames, and they sat around it for an hour of good fellowship.
“When I sit looking at a driftwood fire it’s easy to believe I’m young again,” said Captain Jim.
“Can you read futures in the fire, Captain Jim?” asked Owen.
Captain Jim looked at them all affectionately and then back again at Leslie’s vivid face and glowing eyes.
“I don’t need the fire to read your futures,” he said. “I see happiness for all of you—all of you—for Leslie and Mr. Ford—and the doctor here and Mistress Blythe—and Little Jem—and children that ain’t born yet but will be. Happiness for you all—though, mind you, I reckon you’ll have your troubles and worries and sorrows, too. They’re bound to come—and no house, whether it’s a palace or a little house of dreams, can bar ‘em out. But they won’t get the better of you if you face ‘em TOGETHER with love and trust. You can weather any storm with them two for compass and pilot.”
The old man rose suddenly and placed one hand on Leslie’s head and one on Anne’s.
“Two good, sweet women,” he said. “True and faithful and to be depended on. Your husbands will have honor in the gates because of you—your children will rise up and call you blessed in the years to come.”
There was a strange solemnity about the little scene. Anne and Leslie bowed as those receiving a benediction. Gilbert suddenly brushed his hand over his eyes; Owen Ford was rapt as one who can see visions. All were silent for a space. The little house of dreams added another poignant and unforgettable moment to its store of memories.
“I must be going now,” said Captain Jim slowly at last. He took up his hat and looked lingeringly about the room.
“Good night, all of you,” he said, as he went out.
Anne, pierced by the unusual wistfulness of his farewell, ran to the door after him.
“Come back soon, Captain Jim,” she called, as he passed through the little gate hung between the firs.
“Ay, ay,” he called cheerily back to her. But Captain Jim had sat by the old fireside of the house of dreams for the last time.
Anne went slowly back to the others.
“It’s so—so pitiful to think of him going all alone down to that lonely Point,” she said. “And there is no one to welcome him there.”
“Captain Jim is such good company for others that one can’t imagine him being anything but good company for himself,” said Owen. “But he must often be lonely. There was a touch of the seer about him tonight—he spoke as one to whom it had been given to speak. Well, I must be going, too.”
Anne and Gilbert discreetly melted away; but when Owen had gone Anne returned, to find Leslie standing by the hearth.
“Oh, Leslie—I know—and I’m so glad, dear,” she said, putting her arms about her.
“Anne, my happiness frightens me,” whispered Leslie. “It seems too great to be real—I’m afraid to speak of it—to think of it. It seems to me that it must just be another dream of this house of dreams and it will vanish when I leave here.”
“Well, you are not going to leave here—until Owen takes you. You are going to stay with me until that times comes. Do you think I’d let you go over to that lonely, sad place again?”
“Thank you, dear. I meant to ask you if I might stay with you. I didn’t want to go back there—it would seem like going back into the chill and dreariness of the old life again. Anne, Anne, what a friend you’ve been to me—`a good, sweet woman—true and faithful and to be depended on’—Captain Jim summed you up.”
“He said `women,’ not `woman,’” smiled Anne. “Perhaps Captain Jim sees us both through the rose-colored spectacles of his love for us. But we can try to live up to his belief in us, at least.”
“Do you remember, Anne,” said Leslie slowly, “that I once said—that night we met on the shore—that I hated my good looks? I did—then. It always seemed to me that if I had been homely Dick would never have thought of me. I hated my beauty because it had attracted him, but now—oh, I’m glad that I have it. It’s all I have to offer Owen,—his artist soul delights in it. I feel as if I do not come to him quite empty-handed.”
“Owen loves your beauty, Leslie. Who would not? But it’s foolish of you to say or think that that is all you bring him. HE will tell you that—I needn’t. And now I must lock up. I expected Susan back tonight, but she has not come.”
“Oh, yes, here I am, Mrs. Doctor, dear,” said Susan, entering unexpectedly from the kitchen, “and puffing like a hen drawing rails at that! It’s quite a walk from the Glen down here.”
“I’m glad to see you back, Susan. How is your sister?”
“She is able to sit up, but of course she cannot walk yet. However, she is very well able to get on without me now, for her daughter has come home for her vacation. And I am thankful to be back, Mrs. Doctor, dear. Matilda’s leg was broken and no mistake, but her tongue was not. She would talk the legs off an iron pot, that she would, Mrs. Doctor, dear, though I grieve to say it of my own sister. She was always a great talker and yet she was the first of our family to get married. She really did not care much about marrying James Clow, but she could not bear to disoblige him. Not but what James is a good man—the only fault I have to find with him is that he always starts in to say grace with such an unearthly groan, Mrs. Doctor, dear. It always frightens my appetite clear away. And speaking of getting married, Mrs. Doctor, dear, is it true that Cornelia Bryant is going to be married to Marshall Elliott?”
“Yes, quite true, Susan.”
“Well, Mrs. Doctor, dear, it does NOT seem to me fair. Here is me, who never said a word against the men, and I cannot get married nohow. And there is Cornelia Bryant, who is never done abusing them, and all she has to do is to reach out her hand and pick one up, as it were. It is a very strange world, Mrs. Doctor, dear.”
“There’s another world, you know, Susan.”
“Yes,” said Susan with a heavy sigh, “but, Mrs. Doctor, dear, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage there.”
One day in late September Owen Ford’s book came at last. Captain Jim had gone faithfully to the Glen post office every day for a month, expecting it. This day he had not gone, and Leslie brought his copy home with hers and Anne’s.
“We’ll take it down to him this evening,” said Anne, excited as a schoolgirl.
The long walk to the Point on that clear, beguiling evening along the red harbor road was very pleasant. Then the sun dropped down behind the western hills into some valley that must have been full of lost sunsets, and at the same instant the big light flashed out on the white tower of the point.
“Captain Jim is never late by the fraction of a second,” said Leslie.
Neither Anne nor Leslie ever forgot Captain Jim’s face when they gave him the book—HIS book, transfigured and glorified. The cheeks that had been blanched of late suddenly flamed with the color of boyhood; his eyes glowed with all the fire of youth; but his hands trembled as he opened it.
It was called simply The Life-Book of Captain Jim, and on the title page the names of Owen Ford and James Boyd were printed as collaborators. The frontispiece was a photograph of Captain Jim himself, standing at the door of the lighthouse, looking across the gulf. Owen Ford had “snapped” him one day while the book was being written. Captain Jim had known this, but he had not known that the picture was to be in the book.
“Just think of it,” he said, “the old sailor right there in a real printed book. This is the proudest day of my life. I’m like to bust, girls. There’ll be no sleep for me tonight. I’ll read my book clean through before sun-up.”
“We’ll go right away and leave you free to begin it,” said Anne.
Captain Jim had been handling the book in a kind of reverent rapture. Now he decidedly closed it and laid it aside.
“No, no, you’re not going away before you take a cup of tea with the old man,” he protested. “I couldn’t hear to that—could you, Matey? The life-book will keep, I reckon. I’ve waited for it this many a year. I can wait a little longer while I’m enjoying my friends.”
Captain Jim moved about getting his kettle on to boil, and setting out his bread and butter. Despite his excitement he did not move with his old briskness. His movements were slow and halting. But the girls did not offer to help him. They knew it would hurt his feelings.
“You just picked the right evening to visit me,” he said, producing a cake from his cupboard. “Leetle Joe’s mother sent me down a big basket full of cakes and pies today. A blessing on all good cooks, says I. Look at this purty cake, all frosting and nuts. ‘Tain’t often I can entertain in such style. Set in, girls, set in! We’ll `tak a cup o’ kindness yet for auld lang syne.’”
The girls “set in” right merrily. The tea was up to Captain Jim’s best brewing. Little Joe’s mother’s cake was the last word in cakes; Captain Jim was the prince of gracious hosts, never even permitting his eyes to wander to the corner where the life-book lay, in all its bravery of green and gold. But when his door finally closed behind Anne and Leslie they knew that he went straight to it, and as they walked home they pictured the delight of the old man poring over the printed pages wherein his own life was portrayed with all the charm and color of reality itself.
“I wonder how he will like the ending—the ending I suggested,” said Leslie.
She was never to know. Early the next morning Anne awakened to find Gilbert
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